


We're Playing for Our Lives

by Fox_in_the_snow



Series: Ladies And Gentlemen, We Are Floating In Space [3]
Category: Cormoran Strike Series - Robert Galbraith
Genre: Developing Relationship, F/M, Football, Post-Lethal White, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-01
Updated: 2019-11-01
Packaged: 2021-01-16 06:22:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,713
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21266489
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fox_in_the_snow/pseuds/Fox_in_the_snow
Summary: A new piece set straight after the previous one (A Drowning Grip) about Robin and Strike going to the football and talking (a lot) about their relationship. Also there is a bit of sex, so don’t read if that’s not your cup of tea. If you don’t think that sounds ~romantic ~ enough, well, I guess you’ll be pleasantly surprised by the passion watching 22 men and ball in the freezing cold can bring out in a person.





	We're Playing for Our Lives

“What did you think, then? Changed your mind about the game?” They were hurrying out of the Emirates Stadium, jostled by the thousands of other football fans exiting into the freezing January night. The game had been a jubilant one for Arsenal, and Strike had seen Robin cheering more enthusiastically with each goal scored. At one point she had almost jumped into his arms and it had taken a second to remember they didn’t have to break away guiltily. He’d grabbed her face and kissed her fiercely on the lips; the expression of surprise and delight on her pink tinged face made his fingers tingle just thinking about it. She was now walking quickly, her hands jammed into her pockets as she dodged celebrating Gunners supporters.

“Hmmm…” mused Robin, noncommittally, “I’m still not convinced. A lot of beer seems to have found its way into my hair.”

He looked over at it with slightly narrowed eyes, trying to gauge how serious this response was. He felt strangely eager for her approval of one his favourite pastimes. “You didn’t come to the football to remain looking fresh as a bloody daisy, though, did you.”

Robin smiled brightly and high fived a tall young man in classic Arsenal jersey who was offering his palm to everyone walking by. “No, I evidently came to be a good luck charm for Arsenal. I think I’ll take credit for that result, thank you very much.”

Strike grinned, buoyed by the triumphant 90 minutes they’d just witnessed, and the closeness of Robin by his side. “What a match. 5-1. Fucking brilliant stuff. Giroud was fantastic, Walcott –“ he stopped and reconsidered, aware that he was probably pushing it by going through the details of the game. He glanced at his watch; he would not let the evening be over already. “You want to get a drink?”

Her smile got even brighter and she nodded vigorously. “Yes please, especially to get out of this wind.”

“Problem is, I don’t much like the pubs round here, and now they’ll be far too crowded.” He thought about how he wanted the night to end, and took a breath before suggesting, somewhat hesitantly, “There’s always the Tottenham. They know what we like and it won’t be busy tonight. Good place to have a chat as well as a pint or two.”

If Robin realised his reasons for the choice, she didn’t let on. “Yes, that’ll be easier. Let’s get the tube.” Tentatively, as if he still wasn’t totally sure he was allowed to, Strike put an arm around Robin to usher her through the throngs heading for the station and relished in the warmth of her body next to his. She snuggled in, her arm snaking around his waist underneath his coat. He didn’t even mind when she mentioned how disappointed she was that Andy Carroll hadn’t been seen all game, and just squeezed her shoulder faux menacingly as he directed her towards the entrance of the tube.

30 minutes later they were seated at their usual table in the corner of the Tottenham, a pint of Doom Bar and a glass of white wine between them. It was warm and familiar and perfect. Their knees bumped under the table and neither moved away.

“You know what I used to hate most about football?” Robin asked rhetorically after taking a big sip of her wine. “That Matthew always used to yell “break his leg!” at the players when he was watching it. One would be going in for a tackle and if it was his team he would scream “break his leg!” every time. I hated that. Such a dirty way to play, and I used to think must be what they all wanted to do to each other. But it’s not, is it?”

Strike wrinkled his nose in distaste, unsurprised that Matthew had taken the sport down to its basest level. “For the most part, no. ‘Course there are some mongrels on the pitch who go in studs up every time, but most of them just want to score some beautiful goals.”

There was something almost wistful in his voice, and a thought popped into Robin’s head. She looked at him for a second before asking, “Did you used to play?”

He nodded as he took a big drink of his beer. “Yeah, I did. Not seriously, but I played a bit over the years.”

“In the army?”

Strike sat up straight and played with the cigarette lighter in his pocket, letting himself remember those games. “That’s right, mainly for special occasion matches.”

Robin wasn’t sure if she should keep up this line of questioning. She was always wary of prying into Strike’s private life, and they never talked much about what the explosion had taken away from him. Now, though, with this atmosphere of intimacy and Strike’s knee resting on hers, she decided she could give in to her curiosity. “What position were you?”

“Centre back. No one used to get past me to score. I was never the fastest man on the pitch but I could read the game well. I could always predict where the ball was going to go, and I blocked it most of the time. You don’t need speed when you use your body properly.” His voice sounded fond with a touch of pride. Robin was glad she’d asked. She wanted him to keep talking about it. She wanted to say that she’d wished she’d seen him play, and she wanted to tell him how sorry she was that he couldn’t do it anymore.

Instead, she commented, “Matthew was always up the front.”

Strike couldn’t help rolling his eyes at that. “Course he was. I know a goal sniffer when I see one. Bet he always lurked near the box and tried to get a body part on the ball just to claim the goal, even if it was going in off one of his teammates anyway.”

Robin stiffened slightly at the derision in Strike’s tone. She felt defensive for some reason, not exactly of Matthew but of herself. “He wasn’t all bad, you know.”

“Never said he was,” Strike replied, a little too breezily. Robin couldn’t squash the feeling down again, even though she knew she should drop it and not sully what had been such a pleasant evening so far. It was very important that Strike should not think badly of her, and she was sure that he must. This sent spikes into the pit of her stomach. Truculently 

“He had some good points too,” she stated defiantly. “We did have some good times over the years.”

Strike looked at her with a furrowed brow, and bumped her shoulder gently with his, trying to diffuse the little bit of tension that had suddenly arisen. “I’m sure you did. There’s no judgement here.” 

Robin shifted in her seat, moving away from him almost imperceptibly. “It’s just that it’s hard to explain why I stayed with him so long. It seems very pathetic when you look at it.” Strike said nothing and irritation flared in Robin, born out of anxiety. “I’m not pathetic,” she insisted, her eyes cast down on the top of the table.

Strike was confused, unsure of how to get the conversation back onto a safe track. He could tell Robin was getting upset and he didn’t know how to make her understand that he wasn’t critical of her long relationship. He’d never thought much of it, but he understood it, and fuck knows he wasn’t one to judge about lengthy and messy romantic entanglements. “No one thinks you’re pathetic, Robin. My low opinion is of him, not you.”

“That’s just it, though,” she said, shaking her head in frustration, her red gold hair glittering. “You have a low opinion of Matthew, therefore you have a low opinion of me for being with him for so long.”

Strike told himself not to rise to it. The last thing he wanted was to have a fight with Robin after such a glorious win and two days in which he’d felt happier than he had in – well, longer than he cared to remember right now. He put his drink down and said, calmly, “That’s false logic: _non causa pro causa_. You can’t possibly conclude I think badly of you just because you were with an obnoxious git for nine years.”

Her eyes flashed and he thought he saw a touch of red on her cheeks. “When you put it that way, that’s exactly what I think.”

Once again, Strike reminded himself to stay calm and not let the conversation go totally off the rails. He suppressed a small sigh and absentmindedly tapped the base of her wine glass with his index finger. It was more of an intimate than an irritated gesture. “It’s not true. How many more ways do you want me to tell you?”

Robin looked him right in the face, eyes unblinking. Her voice was steady, and there was more than a hint of desperation mixed in with anger. “Ask me again why I married him.”

Strike shook his head, even more confused. “Didn’t we have this conversation yesterday?”

“Just ask me.”

He sighed and shrugged his shoulders. There was nothing to be done to avoid this right now. “Okay…. Robin, why did you marry Matthew?”

“Because you didn’t stop me.”

Strike set his drink down heavily on the table and shook his head more vigorously than before. He was starting to feel annoyed rather than bemused at the direction things had taken and he hated that even after all this time, Matthew still lurked in their relationship. But more than that he felt angry at Robin for putting herself down in this way. “Nope, that’s a fucking cop out and I won’t have it.”

“What do you mean it’s a cop out?”

“I mean that you don’t need anyone else to tell you not to marry someone.”

Robin sounded almost breathless as she answered him now, and Strike could see she was struggling to get control of herself. She appeared to have successfully restrained her emotions a little bit, and she nodded slowly. “Okay, I get your point and you’re right: I don’t need anyone to tell me what to do. I can make my own decisions. And I have been doing that. I chose to be a detective and keep working for you for shitty money. I chose to marry Matthew even though I knew it was a mistake. I chose to leave him as well, and move out on my own and start a new sort of life. These are things I’m proud of, mostly, I mean except for marrying Matthew. So you’re right that I don’t need anyone else telling me what to do. But you know what would have helped me make a better decision? If you hadn’t fired me right before the wedding. If you hadn’t been messing around that year with Elin. If you hadn’t just cast me aside like what we had was _nothing_.”

Strike found he couldn’t stop his own voice from getting louder now. “Don’t you put this on me, Robin! Don’t you blame me for that!”

“Why shouldn’t I?” she pulled away from him completely, her whole body alive with tension, unconsciously digging her fingers into her thighs.

“Because it’s not fucking fair, that’s why!”

“Why should I care about what’s fair? Why is it suddenly relevant to you_ now_ what’s fair and what’s not?”

Strike raised his eyebrows in disbelief and leant back in his chair. “So you wanted me to – what? Barge in and cause a ruckus before pulling you off, still in your wedding dress, to ride away on a city bus like in the final scene of The Graduate? Not really my style, is it.”

Robin shook her head quickly. She wanted – she needed to explain to him what she meant. She was near tears as she tried to make herself clear. “Obviously not, but – “

“But what? Robin, it wasn’t my place.”

She leant into him, urgently. “I’m not talking about you stopping the wedding and being some terrible cliché out a film. I never expected that. I never wanted that.” She knew this wasn’t strictly true and squashed that old fantasy deep down for another time. “But… beforehand. Couldn’t you have said something?” Her voice sounded so plaintive, and her wide eyes were wet with tears. Strike felt his anger melt away and he sighed before answering.

“It wasn’t my place.”

“Okay, okay, it wasn’t your place, but –“

“And I’m fairly certain you knew how I felt about Matthew.”

Robin eyes shimmered and she blinked them furiously, willing them to remain dry. “But you fired me! Just like that! No benefit of the doubt, no thought of me at all. I can’t tell you how small and – and – discarded I felt. Like I was nothing to you and you were glad to be rid of me. It broke my heart, Cormoran.”

Strike got the feeling she had been needing to say that for a long time. He felt a strange grip on his own heart when he thought about that awful time when he didn’t know if Robin was going to come back to him. He looked down at his feet and then back up at her, hoping his sincerity would be evident.

“You know I’m sorry. You know I regretted it. I’ve told you all this before.”

Robin seemed to have diminished in size and spirit. Her voice was small and her eyes kept flicking around, not managing to stay locked on his. “It’s just… I thought I didn’t matter to you. That everything that had happened between us hadn’t meant anything at all; that I had imagined… certain things. That it was just me who felt there was – there was something else there.”

He didn’t enjoy seeing her so deflated but he couldn’t lie to her. He didn’t want that to be how things were between them. “Listen, I can’t pretend I never thought about you that way. I did. But I also can’t pretend I was sure about any of it.”

“So are you sure about it now?”

She still wasn’t looking at him so he gently grabbed her chin and turned her face to his, brushing her cheek with his thumb as he spoke. “Robin. You, me, here, now: that’s what I want. Simple as that.” He hoped she would believe that he meant this fully, and the grip around his chest loosened as smiled at him, leaning her face into his hand for a second. She then looked around, as if remembering they’d been in the pub this whole time and pulled away.

“Hey, maybe we should go? We’ve probably been here quite long enough for one night.” 

“Good idea, I know somewhere a bit more comfy.” She raised her eyebrows at him. “I mean, that’s not – sorry, did that sound sleazy? I just meant we could – well, I do live just – if you wanted to.” Robin was already up grabbing her coat and nudging him to get his.

“Yeah, yeah, whatever – sure you’re as innocent as they day you were born. Come on, let’s go.” They left the Tottenham and were halfway up the stairs to Strike’s flat when she stopped, turned, and hugged him tightly around the waist, burying her face in his chest almost aggressively. “Cormoran, I’m sorry for being… you know… a bit all over the place. This is just such a strange time and I want it to be better than… well, better than what I’ve had before.”

He squeezed her back, a bit less tightly, and quickly kissed her neck. “S’okay. I get it, I think. Let’s not spend any more time tonight on all of that.” He took her hand and gave it a tug to follow him up the rest of the stairs and into his flat. He walked in and took off his jacket, congratulating himself on having cleaned the place up this morning. Robin stepped into the kitchen a little more hesitantly, glancing around at it without focusing on anything in particular. He went to sit on the edge of the bed and motioned with his head for her to join him. Robin approached and perched down beside him, chewing her bottom lip. He took a strand of her hair between his finger and thumb and marvelled at how soft it felt. She didn’t smile at him, and a crease appeared between her eyebrows before she opened her mouth to speak. 

“Despite what you might think, I’m not weird about sex.”

Strike dropped her hair and blinked his eyes, not sure what he was meant to say to this sudden statement. “I, erm, no – I hadn’t considered it. I mean, I didn’t think you were.”

She was actively avoiding his gaze now and he wanted desperately to put her at ease. “I’m not. I promise. But I haven’t slept with anyone since Matthew, and actually he’s the only person I ever have – not counting, you know.” Robin felt acutely aware of what she wasn’t saying and swallowed down resentment towards the masked man whose impact on her life seemed even more far-reaching than ever.

“It’s okay, Robin. I hadn’t really thought about it all. You don’t need to say anything. I mean, not I hadn’t ever thought about you and well – sex, because that’s a lie, but I hadn’t assumed anything except – except it would be… nice.” He finished lamely.

She still wasn’t smiling. In fact, the crease in her forehead had deepened. It was so hard to explain and she hated feeling like a cliché – like a victim whose life was marred by 20 minutes almost a decade ago. She tried again, hoping he would understand how badly she wanted him to just see her one of the many other women he’d been in bed with. “I’m not scared about it. That’s not it. But I –“

“You don’t have anything to worry about, believe me.”

“No, but the other night, I know we did… some things, but we didn’t – you know, we didn’t –“ it sounded very juvenile in her head to say “go all the way” and she thought she saw the ghost of a smirk cross his face so she was certain that’s what he was thinking of too. She felt embarrassed to be so awkward talking about sex when they were both adults, and they were friends, and now they were even two people who had seen each other in quite a significant state of undress. But he was still _Cormoran_, her boss, the man whom she’d tried for so long to put in a completely separate box and _not_ think about touching.

Strike turned so that he could put both his hands on her shoulders now, gently but firmly. “Please, Robin. Be quiet. The other night was, well, pretty fucking great. Don’t you reckon?”

“Yes,” her voice was small.

“And do you know what I was thinking?” She was finally looking straight at him. “Actually, I wasn’t thinking much at all, but if I could have put it into words it would have been ‘God, this feels good.’ In fact, I may have even said that exact phrase at a certain point. Don’t give me more credit than I deserve: I’m just a bloke in bed with a woman he fancies. You can’t ask me to also be thinking deep thoughts at the same time.”

The expression in Robin’s eyes was imploring. “So it doesn’t bother you?”

Strike was silent for a second while he considered what he should say back to this question. It bothered him more than he could express that some appalling, monstrous excuse for a man had raped her when she was 20 years old. It also bothered him perhaps more than it should when he thought about Matthew in bed with Robin. He took a second to push away the image of a sweaty, spent Matthew rolling off Robin, and thought, scathingly,_ I bet he has no fucking clue how to make her come_. He swallowed, struck by both guilt and desire, and answered Robin carefully.

“The only thing that bothers me is that it bothers you.”

“You know, I never expected you to be so… soft.” But she was grinning at him gratefully, her pupils huge and dark, and he felt his body tingle with want for her.

“Yeah, ‘cept soft isn’t exactly the word I’d use right about now,” he said with a smirk that was simultaneously lascivious and tender.

She looked down at his lap with her own smirk and edged closer to him, threading one hand into the curls at the back of his neck and playing with his waist band with the other.

“Cormoran, to be honest, I _definitely_ thought about you in a more-than-my-boss way before. More than once.”

He leaned in and kissed under her jaw, his hands moving from her shoulders down her arms. “Oh yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“And what did you think when you were having these highly unprofessional fantasies?” his lips were now on her clavicle as he tugged her shirt away from her skin. She sighed and the sound pulsed through him.

“I thought,” Robin’s fingers found their way under the band of his jeans and moved slowly – too slowly – downwards. “That you would probably feel exactly like this.” Strike’s own sigh came out as she squeezed him through his underwear and he gripped her hips harder.

“What’s ‘this’ then?” Robin leant back on the bed, still with one hand down his jeans, and pulled him on top of her with the other one behind his neck. She kissed him on the mouth, wet and willing, before breaking away, and licking her lips in a way that sent every nerve of his body into overdrive.

“Fucking perfect.” It wasn’t often that Robin swore and coupled with the squeeze she gave to his balls as she said it, it was almost too much for Strike. He groaned and sank into her chest.

“Just for your records,” he struggled to get his voice fully under control, “the only thing going through my mind right now is: God, this feels – you are – everything is – _fucking perfect_.”

**Author's Note:**

> I have been writing this for bloody ever. I reckon I started it about 6 months ago and just haven’t gotten around to finishing it properly, so sorry! Not that anyone was waiting patiently for it, but I still feel a bit slack.
> 
> This is based on a real Arsenal vs West Ham game played in January 2013 because, just like JKR, I am all about historical accuracy. If you don’t like football, sorry and I hope you weren’t put off by the game talk or the premise. 
> 
> I love writing Strike and Robin because there’s so many places to go with their relationship. There’s so little they haven’t talked about or done yet, even though there’s already such depth to what they have together. I can’t wait to see what comes from the next book (however far away that might be) and in the meantime, it’s heaps of fun to explore on our own! I hope you enjoy this and maybe there’ll even be more from me someday. After all, I’ve still got so many different English locations for Strike and Robin to go to (London’s a bit boring).


End file.
